Gardening: Growing soil free plants
When we see pictures of pandas it is often with bamboo nearby. Giant pandas not only live in the bamboo forests of China but they rely on it for their food. Pandas eat bamboo shoots, leaves and stems, which together gives them all the nutrients they need. Pandas can easily spend most of their day eating, which means they can poop over 40 times a day and even poop in their sleep!
Bamboo is an amazing material and a sustainable alternative to timber. It's incredibly fast growing, strong, flexible and virtually fireproof. It can be used to manufacture many products from furniture and clothing to cutlery, baby products and even loo roll! Amazingly, bamboo is so adaptable it can be grown without soil.
Let's have a go at making our own soil free planter…
You wil need
1 large plastic bottle
scissors
string
plasticine
cotton wool or fabric
wooden skewers
bean seeds
Instructions
Using scissors, very carefully cut away a 5cm section around the middle of the plastic bottle. Remove the bottle cap.
Turn the top of the bottle upside and put it inside the bottom part. This creates a platform for your seeds and also stops the water evaporating.
Pour some cold water into the bottle so that it reaches the bottle neck.
Start threading your treasures onto the string. Perhaps you could alternate between colours or materials or just mix it up! Make sure you leave enough spare string to tie the chime to the top of the wind chime.
Place the cotton wool balls or fabric on the platform, on top of the strings. Now drop a few bean seeds on the top.
To make a tripod to support the beans, put a small ball of plasticine on the pointy base of 3 wooden skewers. Use a small length of string to tie the other end of the skewers together.
Place the tripod inside the bottle on top of the cotton wool. Push the plasticine balls into the side of the bottle to steady them.
Leave your planter in a sunny spot and watch for the seeds to germinate. Within a week the roots should grow down through the bottle neck into the water.
After a few weeks you can transfer your bean plants to a pot with soil and continue to watch them grow.
This recipe is taken from our gentle giant pandas themed Tool Kit For Eco Heroes.
Each of our themed Tool Kits are packed with hours of activities to gently teach children (and their families) about our environment. Find out more here.